Arisawa
by Taylor9515
Summary: Arisawa Tatsuki becomes the center of attention when all these weird things start happening that will connect all three worlds in a way never imagined before. Title could be better, summary even more so. Could use help with names of OCs. Please review, 'cause I don't know if this story is any good so far.
1. Tatsuki

It was an exhausting day today. Tatsuki had already beaten 7 people when she was told to run seven times around the dojo with those she had beaten. Being with them was worse than doing it alone because she had to watch out for straying feet that intended to trip her. Then when it was time to go, she had been ganged up on just outside the locker room by the very same newbies. Evidently they were sore losers and thought that numbers mattered to Tatsuki. The worst part was while she was walking home, she felt as if she was being watched. After a few minutes, she ran the rest of the way home, hoping that the kids who she'd beaten twice would be smart enough to not follow her home. The tingling on the back of her neck stopped, so she thought it safe to assume she was correct. She arrived at her house and, after locking the door, hardly made it to her bedroom before her knees buckled and she fell into deep slumber before she could feel the ground break her nose.

_Where am I_ thought Tatsuki. She opened her eyes to see a padded floor no more than an inch away from them. She jumped up as fast as she could in self defense before she realized that a padded floor couldn't hurt her without any aid. She looked around. _I'm in a dojo_ her eyes told her._ But not one I've ever been in _before. The room before her was remarkable; it had floors padded with deep red foam, walls covered with a wide range of weapons and plaques, and several sets of equipment sorted by use in the center of the room. The ceiling was nowhere to be found.

Tatsuki started to circle the room. It seemed that three of the walls contained a theme of weapons and blank awards. The east wall displayed weapons that focused around close combat and secret attacks. The wall included several weapons, from a giant pair of barbaric looking fists to a full set of small kunai throwing knives, a round shield with a sharpened edge to a curved, hollow blade shaped in the image of a bee's stinger. A human-sized target was placed against the wall. It had white rings that circled places of the body that seemed the most inconvenient locations to place a punch; places that would more likely break a finger or two than actually hurt the opponent. But the most odd-looking piece of steel was a pair of one-bladed swords that looked completely normal except for the fact that the blade itself curved from the hilt 270 degrees, covering the area where the knuckles would line up. These swords were crossed in front of what looked like a black kimono that emitted a faint aura enough to tell someone that it was special somehow. Tatsuki knew that she wanted to touch them like a 5-year-old wants to touch every toy in the aisle of a toy store.

Tatsuki reached up, took the swords off of the wall, and held them with the blade resting comfortably against the back of her lower arm. The weapons seemed to conform to her, as if it was the perfect weapon for her. _Wow._ She put the swords down and took down the kimono, somehow knowing that it was okay for her to do so. She put it on over the gi that she was wearing. As soon as she let go of the hem, it started to glow.

_What the heck!_

The light receded after a couple seconds and revealed that the kimono had completely disappeared. Instead, the gi that she had been wearing was dyed pitch black and now irradiated the same aura that the kimono had. Tatsuki picked up the swords again and had a sudden rush of bravado, as if she now held all of what she needed to best the world and the rest of her life. That feeling was quickly replaced by a bout of light-headedness. Tatsuki slumped to the floor and lay on her side, prepared to wait the sudden illness through.

Tatsuki opened her eyes to find a floor soaked with blood. Her blood.

"AAAHHH!" Tatsuki found herself leap to the bed in fright. She checked the time: 8:29 AM, just before the alarm. She checked her nose: somehow completely healed correctly but still covered in dried blood. She checked the floor: a pool of dried blood showed where she had recently spent the night and confirmed on thing. The dojo was a dream. She didn't have any curved blades.

She laughed and sighed inside at the same time. She thought it was funny that she thought a ridiculous thing like that had actually happened but at the same time thought it was sad because she had really liked those swords. _Oh well_ she thought as she got up to change out of her sweaty karate uniform. One look at herself in the mirror changed her mind about almost everything she had decided upon that morning.

_I'd rather show this perfectly clean, black gi to Orihime._


	2. What Happened?

Tatsuki sat down next to Orihime after rehashing what had happened in that dojo. It seemed that images of the place had become blurry at the moments she was about to describe them. The most she could say for sure was that there was tons of weaponry hanging around the room and that the specific one had somehow called out to her, saying that it belonged in her hands. She couldn't even say the color of the floor mats.

"You should talk to Kurosaki-kun," stated Orihime, after listening to her friend struggling to say what was on her mind. "You sound just like when I asked him what his Inner World looked like."

"Inner World?" Tatsuki repeated, clearly dumbfounded by the offer of help. She had expected a small bit of concern and an offer to make it up the most recent outcome of her cooking skills or something.

"You know, each Shinigami has an Inner World that basically symbolizes their mind. That is where they talk to their Zanpakutou, learn bankai, and stuff like that. The most Ichigo-kun could manage to say about his was 'skyscrapers' and 'weird gravitational shifts'."

"Geez, how did you memorize all of that?"

"I didn't." Orihime turned her hand towards Tatsuki to show a small note card. On it was the exact words she had said, written out like a script. "Anyway, you should go and talk to him. And then you and I can get some gelato from the new snack shop that opened up down the street!"

_Now that's more like her._ "Thanks, Orihime."

"Tatsuki-chan?"

"Yes?"

Orihime's face took on the shy expression from whenever she talked to Ichigo. "Can I come?"

"Sure. Let's go."

The two left the apartment together and walked to Ichigo's house, talking about the next year of school, college. They were on the topic of what subjects they were going to take when they arrived at their destination. Tatsuki was about to knock on the door when she heard some muffled shouts.

"IIIIIIIIIICCCCCCCCCCCCCHHHII III GGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" "DAAAAAAAAD! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" "Rise and shine" "GET Out of mY ROOM!" The shouting was ended with a large bang from the back yard. Tatsuki waited to see if Ichigo's dad to shout again. When he didn't, she knocked on the door. She was immediately answered by a 13-year-old girl.

"Hello, can I help you?" said Yuzu, before she saw Orihime. She jumped in surprise. "One second. Ichigo! Friends are here to see you!"

"Coming!" was the response. Footsteps of someone walking down the stairs became audible just before a weird sound from the same direction. It was an alert from something that hadn't been active in a while.

"Hollow! Hollow!"

Ichigo tripped and landed face-first on the foot of the stairs. He then jumped from halfway up the stairs and hit the wall next to the front door.

"I seriously need to get that checked," he muttered to himself, as he calmly walked to the front door. He stopped just short of walking into Tatsuki. "Oh, hi. I'm just about to answer this Ho-"

"We heard," Tatsuki interrupted. "Mind if we tag along?"

"Sure, if you can catch up." He greeted Orihime before leaping straight up into the air. He seemingly landed on nothing and leaped off of that to travel southward.

"Did he just leave?" asked Yuzu. The look in her eyes said that she wished she could have seen what truly happened. Tatsuki was yet again that most people would only have seen a boy collapse in the middle of the stairwell and his friends at the door, talking to nobody.

"Yes."

"**Good,"** hissed a voice behind them all. Tatsuki whipped around to see a Hollow calmly creeping out of a portal. This beast was in the shape of a six-legged rhino, the mask had a total of 4 horns on it, each decorated with the trophies of previous encounters with other Hollows. He seemed to be issuing an aura that hid his presence from all but sight, sound, and probably touch. **"Now I can eat you all without any interruptions."** With that, the beast charged.

"NO!" yelled Orihime. "Shiten Kōshun!" a bright yellow energy field materialized between the house and the threat.

** "You have got to be kidding me." **The Hollow slowed down and ducked its head. Energy started to spiral about its nose horn. The moment it made contact with the barrier, a huge wave of force dispersed to both the left and right. The shield somehow diffused and the menace passed through to trample Orihime. She reacted a second too late. She squirmed far enough away to not get gored by a horn, but she was still thrown against the wall of the Kurosaki household.

Something snapped in Tatsuki's head.

"NO!" She charged at the Hollow, filled with an animalistic fury that ignored all logic. All Tatsuki was aware of was that this beast just hurt Orihime. He must suffer the consequences. She reached him as he was turning around and grabbed his mask by the horns above its eyes. With them still in her hands, she kept running forward and swung him over her head into the house across the street. In her follow through, the horns snapped off.

30 miles away, Ichigo gasped as he finally detected the Hollow he was alerted of in the direction he had just come from.

The Hollow, now aware that his cover had been blown, used his fourth and final horn to reopen the portal to the barrier dimension. He was afraid that that Shinigami was going to show up at any time.

"Oh, no you don't." Tatsuki ran at the beast again as it was exiting her world and tackled it. Steel flashed in her hand as she flew, conveniently appearing there when she swung her fist at the beast.

Ichigo landed at the front step as his father stepped out of the back yard. Both of them saw the exact same thing. They saw Tatsuki and Orihime unconscious and Yuzu at the front door, staring at a gaping hole in the house across from her. Without a word, Ichigo picked up his friends and walked inside the house with them. Yuzu nearly fainted when she saw the unconscious people hover in the air and float towards her. Ichigo put them down on the living room floor before retrieving his body from the foot of the stairs.

"What happened out there, Onii-chan?"asked Yuzu.

"I don't know. I was on the other side of the city."

"What are you going to do, now?"

Ichigo sighed. "I guess I'll just have to wait for Orihime and Tatsuki to wake up. I don't know where the Hollow went." He then closed the door, to give Yuzu the only false sense of security that the door could provide.


	3. Tanami

_I'm gonna be late, I'm gonna be late_, thought Tanami as she ran through Rukongai. _Why did that idiot have to choose today to slow me down? I still have a bruise on my knuckles from his bony chin_. As she neared the entrance to the Seireitei, she finished retying the belt to her hakama. It had come loose in her fight with that bully. Jidanbō spotted Tanami and kindly opened the gate for her, so that she could run by without slowing down. He's always been a nice guy.

"Running late again?" he asked while she dashed by. "I was hoping you wouldn't be behind schedule for this one."

"You and me both," she said over her shoulder before the gate crashed down behind her. The Shinōreijutsuin was visible over the inner walls of the place. She was nearly there. _No!_ The gate was closing. She put on as much speed as she could and jumped forward like a runner sliding into home plate.

_Yes! I made it._ Crack! Now all she felt was pain. Most of her had made it in, but her wrist was now stuck in the door. Broken, as the massive pain told her. She screamed, and some other students came to help her out. They started muttering about her breaking her wrist before the examinations took place. _How will I pass the exams now?_

The exams came sooner than she thought. It turns out some were already in session. No sooner had she gotten up did she get swept away to the Kidō test. Kidō, the demon way, was always her weakest point. Needless to say, she failed miserably.

The next three exams went by easily. In the second exam, Tanami showed off her Hohō, her agility. Her distance with Shunpo wasn't the greatest, but her reactions were some of the highest in the grouping. In Hakuda, or hand-to-hand combat, her form was good, her reaction time was good, but she couldn't make herself react the right way at a moment's notice. For example, if someone threw a punch to her right, she'd more likely dodge than block the punch and counter. Not the best she'd ever done but it could have been better if she didn't have the broken wrist. But last and definitely not least came Zanjutsu, swordsmanship. Her strong point.

She picked up her sword with her left hand. If she hadn't been ambidextrous, she'd have been screwed for sure. As it was, she never had enough time to work both hands equally, and she always started with her right. But she managed to show off her prowess with a blade. You name the strike, and Tanami could swing it, counter it, dodge it, and make the opponent regret using it. When she finished her exam, she heard applause. She turned in time to see a bald man duck to whisper to his colleague, a man with feathers stuck to one eye, in secret. _Could they be some of the Gotei 13?_ she asked herself. She walked away from the training area, and the pair followed her.

"What do you want?" Tanami asked without looking back. She gave them enough time to scramble under cover before turning around to face them. A couple red feathers could still be seen at the post of the gate. It was wiggling, apparently in time with the conversation its wearer was having. "I can hear you." The feathers stopped moving. Tanami stooped down, picked up a rock, and threw it at the feathers. The rock was sharp enough to cut the end off of one of them.

"Aaah!" Yumichika jumped out of cover, startled to see the rock fly so close to his right eye. It took him a few minutes to realize that his fashion sense had just been violated.

"Why you-!" He then proceeded to take his sword out and charge Tanami. She waited for him to start swinging before ducking under his sword arm. After that, it was child's play to step on his right foot and lean on his back, the result being him landing on his face and ruining the rest of his make-up. By then Ikkaku had come out of hiding. He helped his friend up.

"'You should have known better' as most people would have said. You just watched her fight and charged her anyway." He then turned to Tanami. "Who are you, and who is your master."

"Answer my question first," Tanami answered back.

"Our answer depends on yours." Ikkaku smiled in a way that showed his dislike for this situation. Apparently he'd rather be anywhere else.

"Fine," Tanami said. "I am Arisawa Tanami, and I'm self taught. Although, a stick in the forest and a bully to oppose aren't much training."

Ikkaku winced. "How would you like to join the 11th division of the Gotei 13?"

Tanami's expression changed from shocked to glee to suspicious. "Who is asking?"

Ikkaku gawked at the girl in front of him. She didn't recognize him? "Madarame Ikkaku. Assistant Captain of the 11th division."

"Of course I will." Tanami was amazed. She would be going straight from the Shinigami Academy to the 11th division by request of the Assistant Captain.

"Good," said Yumichika," you can start now. Captain Kenpachi needs a sparring partner." The grin on Yumichika's face made sent shivers down Tanami's spine.

"What did you say, again?" she asked ten minutes later, staring at the scarred, sculpted torso of the giant man named Zaraki Kenpachi.


	4. Her New Rank

"Get ready!" Kenpachi yelled when he charged. Tanami barely had enough time to raise her sword with her left hand before he was on her. He beat on her sword for several minutes before she dropped it and jumped away. "Get back here! I'm not gonna go easy on you. All of the sudden the world froze and she fainted.

She came to in a kind of dojo. She got up and started wandering. It seemed that three of the walls were full of weapons. The north wall displayed weapons that focused around swordplay. This included several different weapons, from a medieval –looking morning star to an ornate rapier, a bladed sansetsukon to a sword that was bent to resemble a square hook. A sword was lying on the floor next to its unused rack. This one was severely chipped, cracked, rusty, and glued in some places. But the most extravagant piece of them all was a pair of dual-bladed swords crossed in front of a set of light armor that covered all of the weak areas without hindering movement. Tanami felt in the back of her mind that those belonged to her. She took the swords off the rack. They felt just right, the grips conforming to her hands better than a glove. She passed the right sword to her left hand and used her right hand to take the armor off the wall. It was virtually weightless while she put it on and disappeared after she let go of the last strap.

Something hummed behind her. The south wall had three doors in it. One of them, the left one, was open. Tanami walked through it and suddenly felt another spirit. She had somehow gotten in contact with someone else while in her dream. She saw someone appear in front of her. _No, it's just my reflection_, Tanami told herself. _One that is wearing different clothes than I am and is waving to me._ That is not a reflection; that is another person. Tanami rushed over to her doppelganger and hugged her, somehow knowing that this was what she wanted. Power flowed through her, their bond being stronger than the two of them were apart. The second person disappeared, leaving Tanami to walk back to the main room. Of course, when she got there, she only walked back into her other self, which was being charged at by Kenpachi.

"Aaarrh!" he roared, while running in slow motion at her. Tanami had time to examine her fully healed hand and pick up her new dual-bladed sword before blocking his underhand swing at her legs. She skipped over his sword and swept her other blade from his right shoulder down. She spun in midair, turning the blade to follow the edge of his shoulder blade. Now, any movement that Kenpachi could make with his right arm would be hindered by his injury while making the cut more painful and severe. She stepped back to admire her handiwork while her opponent turned to find her. It would have been a crippling blow, had her target not been Kenpachi.

He roared again. This time, she went to greet him in the middle of the room. She shot her foot ahead of her and slid between his open legs. She stopped herself and jumped, jamming her sword deep into his back. He fell, unable to move from his waist down for she had severed his spinal cord.

"I'd recommend that you go see fourth squad about that", she said cheekily, before she noticed the audience that she had attracted. Almost the entire 11th squad had come to see the new girl.

"Look out!" someone cried. She whipped her head around to see the captain take off his eye patch. She merely watched as the wounds she had inflicted healed in seconds, leaving mo scar behind. She still only watched when he turned, eyes nearly on fire, and charged again. He was nearly twice as fast. But she still only watched as he came nearer. _Why am I waiting_, Tanami asked herself,_ I'm about to be skewered, and I'm just standing here!_ Then she knew why. Her answer came from a burst of energy in her left hand.

She glanced down and saw her sword vibrating to the point where she was seeing tow of them. _Wait a minute!_ She pulled the second sword from the first, and the energy, now freed, enveloped here, as if she were hit by a fireball. Only it wasn't painful.

When the heat died down, she saw everyone moving in slow motion. Kenpachi was leaning down to nearly parallel to the floor, stuck in mid charge. Tanami took her twin swords and cut the exact same lines that she had done before the eye patch fell. These stayed while time sped up and the captain slammed into an empty wall. No one had seen what happened, but they somehow knew that Tanami had done it. She had already surpassed her captain on the first day. Of course, that wasn't the only reason they were staring at her.

Her standard Shinigami Academy uniform had turned a blood red in the same instant that her swords split apart. No one knew what it meant, but before they could question it, Tanami took one look at the captain, who she thought was dead, and bolted. She ran as fast as she could in whatever direction had the least obstacles. Without noticing, she passed through a senkaimon and disappeared.


	5. Tayome

"Come back here!" cried an anxious Nelliel Tu. She stood outside the gates of Las Noches, looking out at a teenage Arrancar who was being very stubborn. Of course, the girl thought of it as being defiant.

"Not until you stop treating me as the child I'm not!" the Arrancar shouted back. She was slowly walking backwards away from her adoptive mother. Ever since Nelliel had found the girl, anatomically about ten, she hadn't stopped babying her. It was an outrage that she wasn't allowed to wield a sword. So she had stolen her sword from her mother's room in the middle of the… well, when is it _not_ night. In the middle of the usual sleeping period, she had stolen her sword back from Nelliel and ran off with it. Now here they were.

Nelliel yelled, "I've told you before, Tayome, you're not responsible enough to even hold that thing. Bring it back here right now, or so help me, I'll-"

"You'll what? Ground me like some of those human children you keep telling me about. I haven't even been to the 'World of the Living'. How should I even know it exists?" Tayome turned around and made a motion that Pesche had been nice enough to teach her in secret. A Garganta opened up at the tip of her finger and expanded to just larger than the size of a car. Nelliel gasped behind her and Tayome turned.

"Who taught you that?" The elder Arrancar demanded.

"Why is that important, _Nel_?" the girl asked, using her mother's child name as a putdown. "What matters is that I'm about to use it to experience the world for myself, and you can't do anything to stop me." Tayome stepped through the portal and let it close behind her. She nearly fell into oblivion at first, before she remembered to make a platform underneath her. She used the reiatsu to float forward at neck-breaking speed in the direction where the temperature was the warmest. She found another Garganta waiting for her at the other end and passed through it. Her bare feet touched some kind of floor that felt foreign. _Grass_. She must be in a forest. She could hear the swish of the _leaves_ in the trees. Unlike the ones in Hueco Mundo that were made of marble, these were made of _wood_, just like Nelliel used to say.

Tayome wandered around, feeling the dirt and rocks under her feet, letting the natural breeze run through her hair. She touched the rough bark of every tree, feeling its rough, jagged grooves. She listened to the song of the birds, treading softly as to not disrupt them. When she had walked a great distance, she reached up to her ear. Her fingers found the hard loop she kept over her ear at all times, as if she could remove it. Instead, she slid it to a position where it looked more like a half a monacle rather than a hearing aid. The world was silenced, but at the same time, it burst into color.

The trees were a different color than she thought they would be. They were _brown_ with _green_ leaves. The grass and bushes were green as well. It seemed more docile and welcoming to her than Hueco Mundo did. As Tayome looked on, a bird flew from its perch and glided by, its blue feathers a streak of difference in the shrubbery. A squirrel was searching the ground for nuts of several shades of brown and tan. A small rabbit hopped right by Tayome's still feet, not noticing that she could kick out at it. Her eyes followed the animal as it made its way to the corner of the clearing, stopping momentarily at the white rocks.

_Wait_, the girl thought, _those aren't rocks_. _Those are _shoes_!_

Her eyes followed the white up a pair of tall, skinny legs and to the torso before they were impeded by some object that was glowing a whitish-blue. Whatever it was, the stranger was holding it. Tayome moved to the side, trying to see what he looked like, already assuming it was a guy, but the man kept the glowing object between them. Something, also glowing, let loose from the object and flew at her at an extreme speed. She only had a moment to react, but it was plenty. She stepped to the side and spun, letting her right hand match the speed of the shaft. Her fingers closed on the target, and she finished the spin right back where she was, with the thing in her hands.

It was an arrow. An arrow that glowed with reiatsu. She quickly reached up and moved her bit of mask back to where she preferred it above her ear.

"-the arrow, or I'll shoot again!" The man had been talking the whole time. The arrow and what she now knew was a bow still glowed with energy, even in her blind state. But she could still sense where the man was.

"How did you do that?" Tayome asked.

"Wait, what?" The man was very confused at that point.

"Are you a Quincy?"

"I just told you that," Apparently, he was the proud type who did the long rant thing before a fight, announcing who and what they are before a fight. "Now put my arrow down and give me your sword."

Tayome ignored him. She just turned and walked away, doing her best not to listen to his protests. She found a dead branch, not too springy but not too stiff, and took out her sword. It was more of a long dagger, really. She brought it back to where the stranger was standing.

"Don't come any closer!" was his demand, but she ignored this as well. Tayome just kept walking to him at her steady pace. He fired twice at her, once at the head and once at the heart. She moved her head to the side and concentrated as much reiatsu as she could at the exact point she knew the arrow would land. Upon contact, she spun all of her energy the opposite way. She felt a bit of satisfaction when back of her shirt tore. She, out of all the Arrancars of Hueco Mundo, had created this method. It was a bonus that she was wearing the standard Arrancar uniform; she wouldn't have wanted to ruin anything else.

Tayome's attention was snapped back to reality when she heard the stranger cry out. She had spun the energy too much and had reversed the direction of the arrow. It was now lodged in his body, sticking out of the right side of his chest, just under the arm, and the left shoulder blade. The man had fallen unconscious, his blood circulation cut off. Tayome reckoned that both lungs were punctured, along with a major artery and his esophagus. She rushed to his side. _I can't just let him die_, she thought, as she put her hand on the arrow. She used the same technique to dissipate the energy of the arrow. The blood flowed freely until she could bind him up with the scraps of her clothing that hadn't flown far. She then reached into his pocket and found his cell phone. _Calm down_, Tayome said to herself, _I can handle this_.

It took longer than anticipated, but she ended up calling some girl named _Inoue_. She picked up on the third ring.

"Hello?"

"Yes, are you Inoue Orihime?"

"Wait, _Tatsuki-chan_?"

That was not what she expected. "No, I'm not Tatsuki, or whatever you just called me. I'm looking for an Inoue Orihime."

"Tatsuki-chan, I know it's you. Stop pretending that you don't know I'm me."

_Good_, Tayome thought, _It's her_. "Well, fine. Call me Tatsuki if you want, but I need your help. I'm calling on the cell phone of some guy named _Ishida Uryu_. He is injured and unconscious, and I need you to come and get him."

"Ishida-kun! What happened to him?" Her voice sounded frantic.

"Shot by his own arrow. I met him in the woods, that's all I can give you for our whereabouts. We're in a clearing, probably visible from the sky. Can you come?"

"Be right there." She hung up. _Now, all I have to do is wait_.


	6. Human and Arrancar

Tayome stood up. _Where am I?_ The room before her was remarkable; it had floors padded with deep red foam, walls covered with a wide range of weapons and plaques, and several sets of equipment sorted by use in the center of the room. The ceiling was nowhere to be found. _I must be dreaming._

Tayome started exploring the room. It seemed that three of the walls contained a theme of weapons and blank awards. The west wall displayed items that focused around range and abilities. The wall included several weapons, from a sword that crackled with the static before a lightning strike to a full box of senban shiruken, a sword that was bent in the shape of a square hook to a sword that was jointed at three different places, each section looking like a baboon's tooth. There were a couple of wooden crates that looked odd, and when she looked inside them, they grew in mystery. Both had a sword hilt sticking out of its contents. One was filled with nothing but dust and the other had hundreds of small slivers of blade in it that seemed to scintillate as she moved from side to side. But the most interesting weapon was a pair of swords that had no guards and were attached to each other at the hilts. They bent a bit one way, so they looked like an arch. This weapon was hung in front of what seemed to be a white cloak with a large hood. Tayome knew that they were for her.

She walked up to the wall, only half-surprised that she could hear as well as see. She quickly grabbed her things off the wall and donned the cloak. It disappeared, but it bleached her off-white clothes a pure, nearly blinding white. She was about to sit down, but heard something come from her left. She turned to see that the middle of three doors on the south wall was open. She could make out the profile of a person there. She walked in and, seeing it was a doppelganger, walked over to her. The figure was standing up straight, looking at something Tayome couldn't see. She raised her hand, offering it to Tayome, and Tayome took it. Energy passed through the connection, as if they were stronger together than they were apart. She felt the hand stiffen a couple of times, then relax. She held out the other hand towards the door. Tayome looked, and her eyes fell upon someone else.

This doppelganger wore a black outfit of some sort. Tayome didn't have much time to fully take in the sight, because the girl ran to the still figure and grabbed a hold of the other hand. The reiatsu that Tayome felt climaxed, and she knew that the other girl could feel it too, from the look on her face.

In a few seconds, the still figure let go of their hands and faded away, leaving the two girls together.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" they both said at once. Then, they held up their hands and played Ro-Sham-Bo to see who went first. After quite a few ties, Tayome got the upper hand.

"My name is Tatsuki, and I… This is the second time I've been here. Wherever 'here' is."

"I'm Tayome, and I'm meditating right now." I look down at myself, wondering if I still was in the lotus position. "I met someone in the woods and… Well, he got injured. I called one of his contacts, and she called me by your name."

"We sound alike. That must be why- Wait! Who got injured?"

"Some guy named Ishida Uryu."

She jumped at that name. "Was it Orihime that you called?" She could tell from my face that it was. "Why would Ishida have her number?" She shook her head, as if the question wasn't important. "Anyway, you look like the person to ask. I don't exactly know where I am, but it's a place in eternal night and a lot of white sand and trees made of quartz. Do you know where that is?"

"That sounds like Hueco Mundo, but why would you want to be there? That's the place of Hollows. I lived there for years and I just escaped."

"I don't _want_ to be there. I followed a Hollow there and killed it. Now I don't have a way back." She gave me a sidelong glance. "You lived there? Would you know where I should go to survive? I just outran some sand monster and am now hiding in a small cave."

"Go to Las Noches. That's your best chance. Ask for Nelliel Tu. Don't tell her you're not me, okay?" It was kind of a strain for Tayome to tell her new friend to go to the place she'd just left, and Tatsuki must have noticed, because she put a comforting arm around Tayome. A light bulb winked on in her head.

"Let's switch clothes."

"What? Oh, you mean…?" She agreed. A minute later, they were standing facing each other, admiring at how they looked to other people and talking about what they should do to avoid awkward questions.

"Don't trash anything while I'm gone," Tatsuki said.

"I won't," Tayome responded as the world faded into blackness. The darkness swirled for a bit, rendering all six of her senses (she considered detecting reiatsu a sense) useless. Then, it organized itself into the usual pattern of blackness associated with her disability. She sensed a strong reiatsu expanded over the body of the man, Uryu, and seemed to be healing him. She could tell, because his reiatsu seemed to get stronger over time. The healer was sitting a few paces away, next to the energy field. Tayome moved to get a better sense of things, and the third person noticed.

"Tatsuki-chan! You're awake." She sounded exited. "I was worried you were never going to get up. You meditate too much."

"Yes, I'm up. Are you healing him?" The girl must have been staring at her, because Tayome was getting that prickle on your neck that comes with being watched and not knowing it. "What?"

"How did you get over here when your body's over at Kurosaki-kun's?"

Tayome was surprised to find out that Tatsuki was a human. She hadn't been in the material world long enough to tell the difference, so it took a bit for her to answer, which was a good thing, seeing that her answer was, "I don't know."

"Okay. Well, at least tell me when you became a Substitute Shinigami."

Tayome had, however, had been prepared for this one. "Just today. I had talked to you about that-" Just as predicted, she got tongue-tied. Orihime smiled, already knowing what she meant.

"Kurosaki-kun is waiting at his house for us to get back. He'll be wondering how you became a Shinigami, but I don't really care. It just means you'll be part of our group."

"Group?" Tayome asked.

"Yes. We fight Hollows and all that when the real Shinigami are away. It's me, Kurosaki-kun, Ishida-kun here, and Sado-kun. And now, you."

Tayome felt happy for once, not the kind of emotion she'd get by talking to anyone in Hueco Mundo. _Well, I love this place. Why didn't Nel bring me here?_ "Why do you fight Hollows?"

"Well, I've been told that killing them doesn't really kill them. It purifies them and sends them to the Soul Society. A Hollow is a spirit that has lost its heart. But the fact that they attack and eat the good spirits is enough of a reason for me to fight them."

Tayome stopped hearing her at the word 'heart'. _I don't have a heart? _Tayome thought. _That can't be right. My hole isn't even on my chest. So why would I not have a heart?_ But she didn't say this aloud. "How is Uryu?"

"He's doing fine," said Orihime, a bit off guard from the change of subject. "He'll probably wake up in-"

At that point, Uryu groaned, trying to sit up.

"Ishida-kun! Are you okay?"

"Fine," He said, trying to decipher his surroundings. His eyes landed on Tayome. "Tatsuki? What are you doing here?"

"I was going for a walk," she said, making sure not to technically lie. "I saw you lying on the ground with an arrow through your shoulder."

He jumped up and was knocked back by the inside of Orihime's shield. "Wait, where's the girl who did this to me?"

"What?" Orihime said.

"There was an Arrancar standing barefoot over towards that clearing." Tayome turned to where she knew the clearing was, knowing full well that she was the Arrancar he was talking about.

"Well, the Arrancar isn't here now, so you're in no danger," Orihime reassured her friend. Uryu looked straight at Tayome. She felt the need to act dumb.

"What's an Arrancar?"

She watched Uryu relax. If he had suspected her of being the Arrancar disguised as Tatsuki, he didn't now. She was thankful when he started explaining Arrancars to her, because the action told her that her cover hadn't been blown. _This could work_, she thought to herself.


End file.
